In the manufacture of a hard drive, data sectors on a disk of the hard drive may be scanned for defects. These defects may be recorded as entries in a defect log stored on the disk. The entries in the defect log may provide an indication of which data sectors are defects and therefore may not be used for storage. If the defect log becomes full from recording the defects, then the entire disk is considered a failure and not suitable for use. However, the disk may have remaining data sectors that have not been scanned for defects but are otherwise suitable for use. It would therefore be advantageous to salvage these remaining data sectors for use.